For south Kent councillor Frank Vercouteren, the question is simple: how many firefighters does the community require?
For Chatham-Kent Fire Chief Ken Stuebing, the answer isn’t black and white.
Vercouteren has filed a notice of motion for council’s Sept. 12 meeting which reads in part, “I am requesting a clear, complete and accurate report as to the true number of full-time fire fighters actually required for Chatham-Kent, keeping in mind the large majority of our local calls are the responsibility of our contracted Ambulance Service, not our Fire Department.”
Stuebing said although he’s provided the information to council previously, he’s happy to do so again.
“I presented the information to council in my first and second year and as part of our service review so I was somewhat surprised,” he said.
“The issue been discussed over the years but it can be a bit complicated which I understand can lead to confusion,” he said. “The bottom line is that there isn’t any legislated number of firefighters, there are only guidelines.”
The department has 65 full time firefighters in addition to nine administrative, education and fire prevention staff. There are approximately 340 volunteer firefighters at 16 stations.
Vercouteren said he’s bringing the matter back before council because it needs to be discussed separately from that of ambulance services.
In June of this year, council opted not to accept Stuebing’s recommendation to bring ambulance service in-house, opting to renew a five-year agreement with the current provider, Medavie.
“I keep hearing fire calls are down 30 per cent so we must be doing a good job in promoting safety but then our paramedic calls are up more than a third,” he said. “People are asking for everything laid out in a very simple manner so everyone can understand it.”
“The taxpayers are the owners of this community and when they ask me questions, I’m going to get them answers. Putting in a notice of motion should do that.”
Stuebing said under the provincial fire protection act, fire departments are required to have a chief, conduct prevention and education and meet the local needs and circumstances of the community.
“The Ontario Fire Marshal’s Office guidelines used to be that departments should be able to respond with ten firefighters in ten minutes,” he said. “That was scrapped because it wasn’t based on real science.”
Current national fire protection agencies call for 17 firefighters in 10 minutes for urban areas and 17 firefighters in 20 minutes in rural settings.
“Our challenge is that we’re both rural and urban and we have large travel distances and lots of bridges which can increase response time,” Stuebing said.
He said the tighter standards for firefighter response is partially the result of changes in building materials which have decreased the amount of time responders have to assess a fire.
“We have clips holding wood instead of nails, we have adhesives and materials that can burn more quickly so we face more of a challenge as to whether we can fight a fire from an offensive position or not. Simply put, buildings burn faster than they used to.”
Stuebing said response assessment on the C-K department in 2005 showed “we weren’t anywhere near the standards.”
“We were struggling with the 10 in 10 model so one of the things we’ve done is upgraded our approach to integrating our part time and career firefighters as one department. We began our joint responses earlier this year and it’s working.”
He said the department has invested heavily in areas of training, technology and equipment to make the transition.
“We’ve also had cooperation from unions which had contract provisions that had to be negotiated.”
According to its annual report, the fire portion of emergency services responded to 3,318 calls, of which 271 were structure fires and an additional 1,102 that were fire-related
calls such as alarm activations,
pre-fire conditions and outdoor fires.
Paramedics responded to 8,900 calls, averaging one per hour.
Is it true that Chatham-Kent paid all moving expenses for the new Assistant Fire Chief and his family to move from the UK ? Was there nobody skilled enough in our province or continent to do this job? Another waste of our tax dollars.